


The Love of Bare November Days

by Hecate



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Complicated Relationships, M/M, Soul Bond, Soulbonded to the Enemy, Transfer of Soulbond, fucked up fix-it, soulbond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 19:42:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: There is a soulbond between Alaric Saltzman and Kai Parker, and it's an ugly and horrible thing. (Takes place after 8x14)





	

Kai is gone, trapped again in yet another prison world. The knowledge spreads all over Alaric, and it's oddly dull and very empty. It's familiar, too, but he only recognizes when he felt it before after it wriggled its way into every part of him and into every moment.

It's there when he wakes up, the sun bright and the summer wind happily dancing with the curtains of his bedroom window. It's there when the twins laugh and run through their home, a distance between him and their happiness. It's there when he drinks with Damon, when he talks to Caroline, and when he cooks and works and watches TV. It's there and there and there, and it refuses to fade. 

It's the emptiness of Jenna's death, bleak and dry with hopelessness; it is the guilt and horror after Jo died in his arms. It's an ending that feels as if it would last forever, terrible and mean. It doesn't belong to the life he is living now, years between him and all these losses. 

But it's there anyway.

~*~

He gets headaches.

They wake him up at night like worries about his daughters do; they hit him during the day, all sharp and sudden. He collapses, once, and he wakes up to Caroline fussing and his girls looking scared. 

“What is going on?” Caroline asks.

Alaric shrugs, sits up slowly. “I don't know. I've been feeling like shit lately. I get headaches all the time. And the doctors didn't find anything.”

Caroline frowns. “Why didn't you tell me about this?”

“Didn't want to worry you,” he explains, and he knows it's stupid, knew it all the time. With all the shit going on in their collective lives and everything both of them have gone through together, they should tell each other about things like this. Caroline deserves that. 

Caroline deserves better.

“It's because of the monster,” Lizzie says.

“Which monster?” Caroline asks, and the weariness in her voice has become too familiar, the years and all the deaths they didn't prevent in every word. 

“The monster we sent away with Bonnie,” his daughter replies.

Alaric feels dread gather in his stomach and his heart, feels the way it shapes a body and a name. 

“Kai,” he says, and the name is soft and warm in his mouth.

~*~

Bonnie stands there, Kai next to her, still chained up. He's wild-eyed and shaking, he's a mess, and it echoes through Alaric. He wants to reach out for him, touch him, maybe, and he hates himself for it, hates the emotion that can't possibly be his.

“He looks … bad,” Damon says next to him.

“He was trapped in that world for weeks,” Caroline replies.

And Alaric almost tells them that Kai had spent years in the first prison world, weeks in the second. He is good at that, he's used to that.

Kai was afraid of it.

Instead, Alaric steps away, steps into Kai's vision. Stops.

Kai sees him, frowns, confusion littering his face. And starts laughing. “You gotta be shitting me, Ric.”

Alaric punches him. 

He jerks away a split second later, sharp pain hitting him, bringing him to his knees. Next to him, Kai stumbles, then crumples to the ground.

“Fuck,” Kai says, repeats, “fuck.”

Damon helps Alaric to his feet, worry on his face. “What is this?” he asks Kai, and Alaric hears the threat in his voice, is grateful for it.

“It's a bond,” Kai answers. “It's a stupid soulbond. And I really want to know how you put it there.”

Alaric turns away from Damon, looks at the heap of limbs and pure evil on the ground. And laughs.

~*~

Kai is in the cell they built after he destroyed the old one, magic-dampening runes etched into every inch of it. He's asleep, curled together tightly, and Alaric sees him twitching now and then, eyes moving rapidly beneath his eyelids.

Alaric wishes he had put a blanket in there.

“That guy can sleep anywhere,” Damon says, and there's disdain in his voice; anger, too.

“That guy was in a prison world for weeks,” Alaric counters, just like Caroline did not too long ago.

Damon raises an eyebrow. “So he took some romantic walks through an empty world. Sounds therapeutic.”

Alaric looks at him, looks at Bonnie. And sees the sharp satisfaction on her face.

“What did you do?” he asks, and a part of him is afraid of the answer.

She shrugs, smiles. “Chained him to a chair, turned on the music, and left.”

The sharp horror that blooms inside of him shocks Alaric. It's wild and angry, and it turns his hands into fists.

Damon snorts. “I'm impressed, Bon Bon. That is surprisingly devious.”

Alaric breathes in deeply, tries to let it go. Fails. “I'm pretty sure some people would consider that torture.”

Bonnie looks at him, face blank, and he wonders when she changed so much, when they all did, and if they will ever uncross all these terrible lines they stormed over in the name of saving each other and the town they call their own.

Damon pats his shoulder. “Careful, Ric. Your soulbond is showing.”

~*~

Kai is lying on the ground of his cell, arms stretched out as if he was reaching for the ceiling, for the sky. He looks almost peaceful like this, almost hopeful.

“I think,” he says, “that Bonnie broke the connection between hell and me when she put me into the prison world. Strange, that.”

Then, he laughs. “Guess only one hell can have you.”

Alaric frowns. “So the connection could come back.”

Kai gets up then, walks over to the glass, smirks. “You gonna be my knight in shining armour then?”

“I would let you rot in there,” Alaric answers, and tries not to think what Kai going back to hell would mean for himself.

Laughter, sudden and sharp. “Don't be like that, Ric. You shame our meaningful connection.”

~*~

Bonnie finds a witch that knows more about soulbonds than she does, knows more about them than Kai.

“It's somebody else's bond,” the witch says.

And she touches the connection between him and Kai, and Alaric hears Jo's voice, hears “I love you”, and she is dying in his arms all over again.

The witch steps away, and the memory breaks.

“No” Alaric says. “No,” he repeats. Kai can't have this, can't have his sister's love and life. It's not fair, it's ugly and terrible and impossible.

The witch raises an eyebrow. “You know the origins?”

He nods, answers, and his voice is shaking. “She was my wife.”

Kai doesn't protest, doesn't point out the time of the murder again, their 'yes' unspoken and stolen away.

Alaric points at Kai. “He killed her.”

“A curious exchange, a life for a bond.”

It's Kai who speaks this time, and he sounds resigned, tired. “She was my sister. Twin sister, actually.”

A smile on the witch' s face, surprise and fascination in it. “Ah. That explains it. The bond was always meant to be. Maybe it could always have been him. But it wasn't. Now the bond seeks a connection. They're tricky and wilful things, soulbonds. They don't want to die.”

And Alaric thinks of all the time his body and his mind have been taken over, have been warped to fulfil something's else's bidding. 

“How do we destroy it?” Bonnie asks. “The bond?”

The witch shrugs. “You don't.”

“There has to be a way,” Bonnie goes on, and there's anger in her voice, fury.

“Maybe there is. But if so, I don't know it. And I don't want to.” The witch leaves then, walking away from Alaric and the rest of them, just turning around once. “He could die. If you end the bond. They both could. You should be sure that it's worth it.”

Then, it's just Alaric and Kai and the others, and Alaric almost reaches out to take Kai's hand. Instead, he grabs the chains that bind Kai's hands together and drags him back to his cell.

~*~

Kai is in the hallway in front of the cell when the twins storm in, the two girls laughing and yelling. Life stops and it's only moving again when Alaric puts himself between Kai and his children. The girls look at Kai, look at their uncle, and Alaric thinks they don't even know who he is to them. He hasn't told them, doesn't plan to, and he doubts any of the others did.

“So you're the new abominations,” Kai says.

Alaric pushes him away from the twins, pushes him against the wall. Kai goes easily, bares his throat, and the gesture burns through Alaric, satisfaction and triumph and something quite different.

“Don't ever call them that again,” he orders.

Kai nods.

And Alaric doesn't quite understand the emotion edging through the cracking mask of Kai's face, the fragile lines that make him look a little bit more like Jo.

~*~

He goes drinking with Damon, matching Damon whiskey for whiskey.

“So it's that bad with your new house-mate?” Damon asks.

Alaric nods, shrugs. “It's … something.”

Damon orders them another round.

~*~

“You should be glad I killed them all,” Kai says.

Alaric frowns at him.

“My family. You should be glad I killed my family. They would have never let you keep the twins. They would have taken them.”

Alaric remembers then how Jo fought with her father when he tried to pull her back into the coven because of the pregnancy, remembers how she reminded him about all the things she had already given to the Gemini. 

“I gave you my brother!” Jo had screamed, and there had been rage there, old and bitter.

And her father had looked at her as if she was just as insane as Kai, and Alaric had hated him for it. “He is a sociopath”

“I know,” she had said, her voice dull. “And I loved him anyway.”

And Alaric tries to see what Jo saw in her brother just for a moment. Because there must have been something, Jo didn't love for nothing. But he can't see it, can't see the ease and happiness that they seemed to once have shared, their smiles forever trapped in that photograph of the days when they still shared the same age and home.

“You killed Jo, too,” he tells Kai.

He shrugs. “She sent me to a prison world first.” And it's such a petty thing to say, it's siblings squabbling through the years. He wonders what they were like as children, Jo and Kai, if they fought about the remote control and who would be the first one on the swing. He thinks they did, at least in the beginning, before it all went awry.

~*~

He stops missing Caroline.

~*~

“He needs clothes,” Alaric tells the empty room. “Blood bags. And I need more food.”

And it's a bit like moving in together with Jo, it's so much like sharing his life again, and he doesn't want that. Not with Kai. Maybe not with anyone ever again.

But he can't send Kai back to the prison world, can't set him free either. Kai is his responsibility now. So Alaric deals with it like he has dealt with everything else he stumbled into since he came to Mystic Falls.

He takes a deep breath. And he soldiers on.

Alaric grabs his car key, his phone and his money. And he buys Kai clothes. 

Underwear and jeans and shirts, and Alaric feels dumb while choosing them, feels even dumber when a saleswoman tries to help him with the selection.

“Oh,” Damon says, suddenly appearing next to him, and Alaric hates how he still manages to do that after all this time, how he can still surprise him like that. “He is buying them for his soulless boyfriend he keeps locked in his cellar. Fashion is not of importance. Because of him being locked away and so on.”

The woman blinks at them.

“You're an ass,” Alaric tells Damon, rolling his eyes.

“But an entertaining one. In contrast to loverboy.”

Alaric doesn't react to Damon's insinuations, refuses to. He shrugs. “Oh, he is plenty entertaining.”

Damon laughs and takes the underwear out of Alaric's arms. Turns to the saleswoman with a smile. “Forget what we talked about. And please, find out if there is anything that is cheaper than what my friend here chose. Way cheaper.”

Then, he turns to a heap of cheap t-shirts, grabs a black one with a He-Man cartoon on the chest. Grins. “My treat.”

Alaric shakes his head but doesn't argue, doesn't point out the normalcy of the moment and how that frays the boundaries between him and Kai and the lives that keep on going on around soulbonds and witches and dead girlfriends.

“I'm sure he'll be thrilled,” he says instead. “He is a 80s boy, after all.”

~*~

“Should I have killed her later?” Kai asks him once, and he sounds curious. “After the wedding, I mean. Should I have killed her then? She would have been your wife. Would that have made it better?”

Alaric almost walks into the cell then, almost walks in and hits Kai. Instead, he turns around, storms away. Puts his fist through the drywall of his bedroom and watches the skin break. It's better than looking at Kai.

~*~

“They're all that is left of your family,” Alaric says, and it's such a stupid thing to point out. Kai is the reason his whole family is gone, he isn't born to care about what is left of it. Sometimes, Alaric thinks Kai simply can't, not even with whatever remained of Luke beneath his skin and in the horrible thing that is his heart. “If that thing gets to them, they'll die,” he goes anyway.

“They created the prison world,” Kai points out. “So forgive me if I don't really like them.”

And Alaric hasn't thought about that, hasn't realized what his daughters' roles have been in the last few months of Kai's life.

“They're children, Kai,” he tries. “They didn't know what they were doing.”

Kai shrugs. “No one cared about me being a child when my powers kicked in.”

Alaric nods. “But I'm not your family. I would never force my children into merging, I would never treat them like shit just because they take power instead of having it. “

Kai looks away then, and Alaric wonders if he remembers being his daughters' age, remembers just not being enough for someone to care more about him than his strange abilities.

“You're not my dad, and they're not me. Why should this change anything?”

Alaric looks at Kai helplessly, sees the angry lines on his face, and he knows that Kai would never help because of the girls. 

“You're going to help anyway,” he says, and he reaches out for the bond.

Kai snorts. “It's not like I have a choice in the matter.”

And he doesn't.

~*~

Kai looks alien out of his cell, a wild animal that should be behind bars, too dangerous to be allowed near humans. He stands close to Alaric, and Alaric can feel the tension running through him, would know about it even without the bond.

Kai doesn't say much, just listens to their plans and nods when Damon tells him about his part in them. When Bonnie arrives, Kai steps even closer to Alaric.

Bonnie smiles.

They leave in the middle of the night, the twins hidden away with Caroline to protect them. Damon is running his usual commentary, and it's all sadly familiar, Kai the only new piece in a long list of nights they’ve spent with their lives on the line.

But the fight, for once, is easy, Kai and Bonnie a greater advantage than any vampire could ever be. It's almost beautiful to watch them like this, power and sharp grace.

After it's all over, Kai smirks at him. “Twinsies are all safe again. Happy now?”

“Very,” Alaric replies, dryly.

Damon snorts. “Let’s put Snow White back into his glass coffin before the witch gets him.”

Kai raises an eyebrow, and he looks half-amused. “I always knew my mom lied when she told me apples were healthy.”

The drive home is strangely relaxed, Kai sitting with him in the front, looking outside the window, still and silent. But there is no tension there, not until a Spin Doctors song starts playing. He reaches out then and switches off the radio.

The silence after is oppressive.

Alaric gets Bonnie home first, Damon second. Shakes his head when Damon asks if he should come along to put Kai back in his cell. “I'll be okay.”

He takes the long way home, lets Kai take in the town. He hasn't seen the world for a while, after all. Mystic Falls might not be much, but it's better than prison worlds and glass prisons.

Later, he watches Kai on the walk from the car, almost expecting him to attempt an escape. But Kai doesn't even try anything, just marches right back into his prison.

He grins at Alaric in the white light of the cell. “That was fun, we should do it again. But don't expect any hanky-panky until the third date.”

~*~

He fucks Kai against the glass wall, Kai's hands flat against it, grappling for purchase, Alaric's fingers digging into his hips. He sees the mirror of Kai's face in the glass, artificial and removed, and he's grateful for the distance. But Alaric can hear the shocked sounds Kai makes, stunned and broken, and he thinks, 'You have never been here before,' thinks, 'Jo would never forgive me for any of this.'

But it's not Jo with him, can never be Jo again, and Kai is hot and tight all around him and takes everything Alaric has to give.

It's not nearly enough, but it has to do.

~*~

“Can you wake Elena?” he asks Kai.

Kai doesn't answer. Alaric waits him out.

“No,” Kai finally says. “I can't. The spell isn't built that way.”

Alaric nods, watches Kai, sees him restless.

“But,” he pushes.

Kai looks away. “The twins can. They could siphon it.”

Hope hits Alaric in the gut hard and fast, and it blooms like pain, it shakes him. But there is something Kai isn't saying, doesn't want to tell him. 

“Kai,” he says, warns, and he hopes the bond will pull the secret out of Kai.

Kai looks at him, unhappy. “It would probably kill them.”

And it's bad, this dying hope, this knowledge that Kai didn't want to tell him, wanted his children to die, and that he is bound to him for the rest of his life.

“Don't tell Damon about any of this,” he orders. 

Kai nods.

~*~

Alaric is drinking too much again, expensive whiskey some days, cheap whiskey most of them; and it burns through his body like the bond does, an unforgiving heat that tells him to drink more, take more, hold Kai down and hurt him.

He drinks and he dreams of the boy in the cell with his beautiful smile, wicked and sharp. And he wonders if he felt for Jo like this; like she was the last few steps before taking a jump, the run-up you needed to be sure about but never were, the moment when your legs bent this little too much and you know you won't ever make it.

Alaric thinks he didn't. But it doesn't matter now.

~*~

“Do you think he knows where the Evil One is?” Damon asks. “She has been worryingly absent. And after he announced her so nicely.”

Alaric shakes his head. “He says he doesn't. And I believe him on this. Katherine used him to get rid of Cade so hell would be hers. She isn't interested in him.”

“That,” Damon says, “I have no trouble believing. But she is obsessed with Stefan. It's very unsettling that she hasn't tried to set Caroline on fire yet.” 

Alaric turns to him. “You sound disappointed by that.”

Damon shrugs. “I liked it better when I had some idea where the devil was.”

“I'm sure you can entertain yourself until she makes her entrance,” Alaric points out. “There are so many people here for you to annoy.”

Damon smirks. “True. I can always visit the lesser demon you keep in your cellar.”

~*~

Alaric can't sleep.

He hardly does, these days. The bed is too empty, the silence too loud, and Kai being so close is an itch he wants to scratch.

Alaric gets up after hours, walking through the house, listening to the small sounds it makes at night. The ticking of a clock, the hum of the fridge, the soft, familiar creaking of the doors. It's peaceful but it doesn't settle him.

He follows the bond to Kai.

Alaric sits down in front of the glass wordlessly, watches as Kai wakes up and wonders what woke him. A noise, or maybe Alaric being there. It's a strange idea, oddly comforting.

Kai gets up and comes to him, sitting down across from Alaric, a warped mirror image. He looks sleep-soft, hair sticking out in different angles, an imprint of his pillow on his cheek. He looks like somebody people could love.

Kai reaches out, placing his palm against the glass.

The world is quiet for a while.

Then, Alaric mimics him and thinks the glass away, imagines the touch of Kai's hand against his, real and warm. 

He wakes up hours later, the floor cool and uncomfortable against his body, a hand curled together near the glass. Kai's hand rests on the other side.

He is staring at Alaric, says, “I hate this,” and it's all half-truths and frustration and wishful thinking.

Alaric nods. “I do, too.” 

And there are memories beneath his answer, memories of all the things that can't happen again in his life, soft kisses and dances and making breakfast with somebody he loves. It's all gone, taken away, and sometimes he doesn't even want it anymore. 

“Bonnie will find a way to break the bond,” Alaric goes on, and he hopes that these words will stop feeling like a threat, that he will be himself again once he's not connected to Kai anymore..

Kai looks away. “And then she'll put me back into the prison world.”

_She won't_ , Alaric almost says. _I won't let her._. But he doesn't. Without the bond, he has no idea what he will let Bonnie do to the man who killed Jo, the man who would gladly murder his daughters.

“Prove yourself useful and maybe she won't,” he says instead.

Kai laughs. “That didn't work when I helped Damon bring back his mother.”

And Alaric hadn't thought about this for so long, about Kai being on their side for a little while, about him standing in front of Jo with a smile on his face, wishing her a good life. He wonders, suddenly, if Bonnie ever asked herself if she is to blame for Jo's death.

Kai speaks up again: “Whatever happens, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life in a cell. It's not like you will ever let me out here.”

Alaric swallows, looks away. Thinks of dead children and a dead lover. “A life sentence. Not unusual for murder.”

“With you.” Kai replies. “I will spend my life with you.”

And he suddenly puts a smile on his face, and it's the half-crazy one, the grimace that tells the world that Kai is broken and amused about it. “I guess you're better than The Spin Doctors.”

He puts his hand against the glass again, still smiling.

Alaric does the same.

~*~

He puts a TV in Kai's cell, Damon leaning against the wall and happily insulting his skills with putting together an Ikea table before asking again if Alaric was sure about what he was doing. “There’s _Game of Thrones_ on there. He might get inspired.”

“How to train his dragon?” Alaric counters, almost hitting his thumb with the hammer.

“Uh, Cersei?” Damon says. “She'll definitely give him ideas.”

“Is she hot?” Kai asks, watching them from his bed. “Then she'll hopefully give me some.”

Alaric shakes his head at them, turning back to his finished work, giving it a hard push to test it.

“Looks surprisingly stable,” Damon observes. “He could try to kill you with it.”

“I could try to kill him with lots of things. Gimme TV,” Kai says, and for a moment he reminds Alaric of his daughters.

Damon raises an eyebrow at Alaric: “Is he always this bossy?”

Alaric shrugs. “He's cooped up in this cell the whole time. It was probably bound to happen.”

He walks back to the cell alone hours later, his mouth still stinging from the last sip of whiskey. He hears the TV and Kai before he even sees them. Recorded laughter from a studio audience, artificial and hollow. He used to be so annoyed by the sound when he was in his 20s, younger and filled with so much more hope than he is now.

Kai is laughing, too, and it might be the first time Alaric has heard him laugh like that. There is no bitterness in the sound, no disdain or arrogant amusement.

It sounds so much like Jo. 

And it's always a shock, this resemblance between them; and it always hurts. It angers Alaric, too, the knowledge that Kai is still there and Jo isn't. And yet, it always makes him want to reach out for Kai in the hope of touching whatever Jo and he shared.

~*~

Another mission, another reason to take Kai with him into the outside world. It's just the two of them this time; the Salvatores chasing after a rumour about a cure for Elena, Caroline in New Orleans. He didn't ask Bonnie to come.

It's a group of vampires, angry and high on their strength, and Alaric wants them dead as fast as possible. He could go after them on his own, and he thinks the others would tell him that he should, or better, that he should wait for them.

But Kai won't try to escape and Kai will have his back, and a part of Alaric likes to see him outside of his glass cage, likes the way he looks when he’s fighting alongside him.

He wears one of Alaric's jackets. It's all black and leather, and it makes Kai look as dangerous as he is, its veneer of rebellion becoming reality on him. 

It makes him look like he belongs to Alaric. 

And in so many ways, he does.

~*~

Caroline marries Stefan on a Friday, and it's as perfect as it can be. The bride is dressed in white and the sky is dressed up in the clearest blue, there's laughter and music in the air, and the two of them look painfully happy.

Katherine doesn't show up.

“Maybe she got bored of us,” Alaric says.

Damon snorts. “Not Kittykat. No, she is probably sitting on her throne in hell, thinking up new ways to kill us all.”

Alaric reaches for a glass of champagne, looking at the people swaying on the dance floor, his girls twirling around each other with big smiles on their faces. It's the kind of moment that usually gets ruined by disaster. “And maybe you're just as obsessed with her as she is with Stefan.”

“Don't ruin the party with talk about my husband's ex,” Caroline interrupts them, and she sounds relieved and giddy and like Katherine could never hurt her again.

And Alaric knows, with sudden clarity, that he doesn't love her anymore, that the quiet love he had for her has turned into nostalgia and friendship. He just hadn't noticed it before, his feelings buried beneath the soulbond, his focus on Kai. 

It's easy to smile at Caroline then, to raise his glass to her. “No more talk about Katherine. Today is all about you and Stefan.”

Caroline laughs. “It better be.”

~*~

Bonnie hurts Kai on a Friday and Alaric calmly puts a gun against her head. Later, after Damon pulled him away, after the chaos has calmed like a wild animal falling asleep and Kai is safely tucked into his cell again, Alaric thinks he would have pulled the trigger.

The thought doesn't scare him as much as it should.

~*~

It's been months, and it's only now that Alaric realizes how much Kai leans into his touches, how close he keeps himself to Alaric whenever they go on a hunt

'Touch starved,' he thinks, and it's an odd idea.

But he touches Kai, too, reaches out to help him up after a fight, pulls him back when the others think that Kai might try to run. He touches Kai, and he feels Jo beneath his palm, feels her when he traces Kai's lips with his fingertips and looks for her smile.

He'll always look for her.

~*~

“I'm still me,” Kai tells him, drunk on bitterness and the cheap whiskey Damon gave him as a joke. “I'm still me, and half the time I still want them dead.”

And Alaric knows Kai means Lizzie and Josie, and it's a cold and bleak knowledge, a knife constantly grinding against the walls of his home.

“But I can't kill them, I fucking can't. Because Luke pushed his fucking empathy on me, and Jo forced her bond on me, and I can't _be_ me anymore. “

And it's all wrong, of course it is, because Kai killed both of them, took more than Luke's magic and more than Jo's life.

Alaric almost asks him then if he still wants to be who he's been when he slaughtered his family, when he fought his way out of the first prison world with lies and knives and blood. But he doesn't want to hear the answer, doesn't want to know that Kai has no interest in being better than he used to be, that he is still the same monster he always was. 

It's almost painful to think about what Kai still is beneath the bond and the routine that has found its way into the life they share, a routine that is strange and unexpected and so very fucked up. No one should get used to a life like this.

Kai laughs, and it's a crazy and dangerous sound, and Alaric thinks that he himself sounds just like that sometimes.

“Kai,” he says, and it's enough to quieten him.

Kai turns to him, eyes fever-bright. “I wish I could kill them again,” he says, and Alaric knows it's a dare for him to punch Kai, to put some cracks into what they have because Kai doesn't want to bear it.

He understands it because he feels just the same.

And Alaric misses Jo, misses her laughter and her skilful hands, misses the way she used to cock her head when she thought he was being dumb, misses her arms around his neck, misses that it had been almost easy with her. And he hates Kai, hates and hates and hates him.

“Kiss me,” Kai demands, and there is no warmth in his words, just need and an ugly thing that maybe, probably, someday wants to be love. “Kiss me.”

And Alaric does.


End file.
